Place: Geneva, Switzerland
Date: November 3rd

The Minister of Justice, Ivo Valente, will head Timor-Leste’s delegation and respond to the 2nd cycle of evaluation of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on the human rights situation in our country, on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).
Timor-Leste will be submitted, for the second time, to a review to assess Timor-Leste’s compliance of its international obligations and commitments made in the field of human rights. The previous assessment took place in October 2011.
The Universal Periodic Review takes place in the form of an interactive dialog and Timor-Leste’s three “evaluator” countries are South Africa, China and The Netherlands.

The UPR is an innovative mechanism and implies that the 193 member states of the United Nations Organization (UN) are subjected to a further evaluation of its human rights situation every four and a half years. This review aims to analyse the fulfilment of international obligations and commitments undertaken by each State in the field of human rights.
The UPR process is based on three documents: the official report submitted by the State that is being assessed, the report from the UN bodies and mechanisms with information about this State, and a compilation prepared by the UN from the contributions sent by civil society.